The present energy crisis and the progressive contamination of the environment have intensified the search for solutions for producing an internal combustion engine in which, at the same time that the fuel consumption is reduced without affecting the power of the engine, the contaminants in the exhaust gases can be lessened.
A multiplicity of devices have been proposed for reducing the contaminants in the exhaust gases of the internal combustion engine based on modifying the air-fuel ratio of the mixture; however, notwithstanding favorable results in some cases, they require constant regulation for differing atmospheric pressures.
Other devices of comparable complexity in their regulation have been thought up to change the ignition time in engines, with the object of reducing the combustion temperature and obtaining a reduction of certain contaminants in the exhaust gases.
Engines have also been conceived with dual combustion chambers, of a design highly complex and different from conventional designs, to reduce the contaminants in the exhaust gases of the engines.
Similarly chemical catalysts have been used to convert the contaminants in exhaust gases into harmless components, naturally without affecting the fuel consumption or the power of the engine.
All of the reference types mentioned are outside the scope of this patent and are mentioned only as systems which pursue objectives related to that of the present invention.
A more closely related prior type, although wholly different, is one which relates to systems employing water-gasoline emulsions and the like, as fuel for internal combustion engines; in this case, although the proportion between water and gasoline may be constant, there is danger when the engine is started, and the gasoline is harder to ignite, producing weaker combustion, since part of the caloric energy of combustion will be used to evaporate the water; the cylinders may indeed be flooded with water, with the resulting difficulties.
In no system in existence up to the present time is steam first generated and then injected into an internal combustion engine, that is, by evaporating water outside the engine and thereafter injecting it thereinto, by means of a self-regulated system.